Regardless of your ultimate training goals, everything must start with how we raise our puppies. How do we interact with them at a young age while they learn what is appropriate behavior? How do we teach our young dogs how to live in our home? How do we develop the drives needed to train in specific disciplines? In this DVD, world-renowned dog trainer, Michael Ellis, will teach you exactly how he does just that.

The DVD starts off with how to select and pick your next puppy. From there, we will dive straight into bringing your puppy home, management, and socialization. Michael covers everything including how to set up your home, how to prepare your puppy for veterinary visits, and how to successfully live with a working dog in your home. A common misconception in the dog training world is that working dogs cannot live in your home and still perform at the highest level. Michael will dispel that myth with personal experience and examples. You will also learn how to introduce the home to your dog and separate it from the rest of their formal training regimen.

Management and Socialization are probably the two most important aspects of puppy development. By implementing good management techniques, you will create a dog that understands what rules and expectations are expected to be followed. The socialization methods taught in this DVD are going to teach you how to develop a dog who is confident and able to work in any environment under distractions.

By understanding and identifying early developmental periods, you are going to be able to set your puppy up for success by preventing unwanted behavioral issues. This is all done by implementing proper management and socialization routines. However, first you must understand what to look for at specific times within your puppy’s critical developmental periods.

You will learn to begin using engagement techniques with your puppy at a very young age. This is going to allow you to develop an adult dog that wants to be with you and wants what you have. During our engagement work, we will begin the first step in our recall training process. This step is the restrained recall. This simple training exercise has countless benefits to our relationship with our dog and the quality of our formal recall later down the road. By the end of the DVD, Michael will also teach you the next several steps toward training a solid recall command.

In the second half of the DVD, Michael will cover how to begin training behaviors and develop necessary drives. Using operant and classical conditioning, you will learn the basic learning theory behind Michael’s entire training methodology. From there, you will learn how to apply that theory into a marker training system. Michael will teach how to shape 2 basic behaviors using luring. This work will transfer straight into Michael’s core DVD, The Power of Training Dogs with Food.

Developing play drive is an import part of our puppy’s development. When developed properly as a puppy, utilizing play as a reward with our adult dogs has huge benefits to the quality of our training. Not only our ability to use it as high value rewards, but also our ability to keep our dog’s attention through extremely difficult distractions. The play chapter in this DVD is extensive. You will learn food play techniques, toy play techniques, and restrained play techniques. You are also going to learn how each of these techniques play on each other to create a finished product of an adult dog who not only loves to play as a reward, but also understands the rules of play and how to play with their handler. You will learn how to transfer food games into tugging games, how to back chain retrieving behavior from tugging behavior, and how to use restraint to build drive and muscle memory.

Truth, you can't go wrong with any type of work that Michael puts out for us to learn and to enjoy from. He's an absolute pillar in the dog training community and a truly a valuable resource. Huge admirer of his work! I'm giving it a 10 star rating.

- Anonymous on 08/14/2017

Verified Customer Review

Practical and concise info all around for raising not just working puppies, but any puppy. It's practically a step by step from ages 8 weeks and up, and the methodologies make total sense. I learned A TON from it in areas where I wasn't totally clear on before, and I'm a beginning IPO home getting a working shepherd pup this year. It's totally worth buying for anyone getting a puppy.

- fionahsieh on 07/13/2017

Verified Customer Review

awesome DVD very detailed info.

- Powellkennels on 01/27/2017

Another fabulous video from Leesburg and Michael Ellis, perhaps my favorite to date. It is wonderful to have all of the puppy info in one place. Whether you have your first sport puppy or your tenth, it is a great reminder of all the little things. I highly recommend this video. If your working with a professional trainer this video will give you a huge head start toward understanding the process and vocabulary. I will be encouraging all of my puppy clients to watch it over and over.
Gail Marit
Clever K9